Surprised?
As Tportal reported on the 4th of August, 2017, last month, Dubrovnik’s City Council voted to amend the Decision on Organisation and the Method of Billing and Parking Control in the City of Dubrovnik, the amendment will mean that the price of parking for an hour in the zone near the historic core will increase from 40 kuna to 75 kuna during the summer.
A move that is sure to further irritate tourists who very rightly claim that parking in Dubrovnik is not only an issue when it comes to actually finding a space, but the sheer, seemingly unjustifiable cost of then putting your car in the space is just rubbing salt into the wound.
More incredible yet, the new daily parking fee will jump from the current 800 kuna to an eye-watering 1500 kuna!
Dubrovnik Mayor Mato Franković justified this decision as ”appropriate” for the location.
Tportal went on to investigate the opinions of the citizens of Dubrovnik and their guests about the new parking prices, and all the respondents considered the new prices to be “incomprehensibly expensive”.
One man from Dubrovnik, who wanted to remain anonymous, said that the new price was ridiculous and that even foreigners with ”deeper pockets” wouldn’t pay such prices.
“It’s robbery and I really don’t know who will park at these prices,” the anonymous Dubrovnik resident told Tportal.
”Nikša M” doen’t agree with him, pointing out that in his opinion, the price is in line with what the city offers to its guests.
”There is always someone who will pay that price. I don’t think it’s much money for foreigners wanting to see Stradun and the walls. We, residents of Dubrovnik, never park there anyway.”
In turn, a tourist from Belgium argues that such parking costs are unimaginable.
”There is no such thing in Bruges, which is also under UNESCO protection. I arrived with my son in Dubrovnik and for three hours of parking, which is how much time we needed to see the city walls, I paid 225 kuna. When you add that to the (raised price) of 150 kuna per person for entrance onto the walls, and then two small pizzas with two juices, all costing 246 kuna together, it turns out that without five hundred kuna, there is nothing to do inside the old city.”
While the statement of the Belgian tourist isn’t entirely true, it is unfortunately the case that many tourists come away from Dubrovnik feeling irritated at being ripped off. If I had a euro for every time a tourist asked me about Dubrovnik’s notoriously expensive reputation, I’d be very, very rich.
Tourists visiting the most beautiful city in the world to see some of the most well preserved history in Europe and experience a living, breathing museum should not go away with a bitter taste in their mouths. Being cheap is not good, but greed is a very dangerous thing, and too much of it will begin to make even Dubrovnik look ugly.
